Crucial PC3200 2GB Kit

Just because a memory kit is ‘value’ doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of your attention. Today we are taking a look at a fair priced 2GB kit from Crucial, which rolls in at DDR400 speeds. Let’s see how it stacks up, and see if we can squeeze any overclocking out of it.

Features

After some work, I managed to uncover the highest stable speed for the Crucial CT12864Z40B.M16FD, which was 214mhz at 2.5-4-4-8 2.89Vdimm. For overclocking, I’m limited to running a divider of 5:4 to keep the ram stable. Oddly enough the CAS# Latency has nothing to do with the stability issue, as it errors at 2.5 and at 3 at the same point, so the issue lies with either RAS# to CAS#, RAS# Precharge or the TRAS#. I just thought I would point this out just in case you were thinking that maybe by raising the CAS# Latency, you’d be able to squeeze more speed from these sticks. That just isn’t the case.

As we can see from Everest at default speed with the CAS settings of 2.5-4-4-8, the Crucial ram has a bit of a lead over the OCZ PC4200 with a latency of 3-4-4-8. I tried booting the OCZ with a comparable latency setting but sadly it won’t boot at anything but 3-4-4-8.

As the FSB speeds increase, we see that the read speed increases and the latency decreases. Oddly enough at 214 1:1 the write speeds are unchanged.

At a FSB of 267 with the divider at 5:4 for a ram speed (again) of 214 you’ll note that the reads have really pepped up with an increase of 481MB/s over the same ram speed at 1:1 and a decrease in overall latency of 10.6ns but the write speeds only see an 89MB/s boost but compared to the OCZ at 200mhz FSB 1:1 you’ll note that it’s still a respectable boost.

In SANDRA, we find that the OCZ and the Crucial are pretty close to being tied at 200FSB 1:1. Aat 214 FSB the performance has picked up close to 225MB/s across the board with the Float becoming the fastest calculation that the ram performs. With the FSB at 267 and a 5:4 divider, this evens up considerably with the Integer once again gaining the lead, but by a very narrow margin. It does however gain well in excess of 600MB/s over the 214FSB 1:1 which so far is the most impressive performance increase we’ve seen.